Tom Lehrer People Quotations

I have always found it interesting... that there are people who regard copyright infringement as a form of flattery.

When you're in a public profession like I was, and you stop doing it like I did, people think you're either crazy or dead.

Eddie Izzard is wonderful, I think, but I've only seen that one HBO special he did. He's one of the few people who talk about stuff other than girlfriends and relationships and flatulence and genitalia. There are very few of them who actually talk about real stuff.

The people who were in college in the '50s were my first real audience, and their kids, the people who found my records in the cabinet during their 'Mad 'magazine years picked me up also.

The people who came to hear me perform or to buy my records were not the type who would be offended. But I gather that there were other people who were offended.

Well I wasn't really attacking the religious beliefs, I was attacking the formality of the rituals of the Catholic church; however, people took it wrongly.

Comedy is very important, yes. For one thing, it keeps you sane. But it's not really a conversion. I mean, it's marginally a conversion, because if people tune in or go to a nightclub or even watch television, and hear that a lot of other people are laughing at something you thought was not funny, at least it'll force you to reconsider.

People would go anywhere to see a famous person in the flesh, no matter what they do.

I would do nightclubs and concerts - particularly concerts, which is mostly what I did - and only people who already agreed with me would show up. People weren't going to come and inadvertently turn on their television set and find this offensive stuff coming out.

I think that if people are having trouble communicating with one another, the least they can do is SHUT UP.

People are stupider than anybody.

I find that people can pass me on the street who've just seen my picture in the paper and they wouldn't recognize me. If they'd seen me on television, the heads turn. They say, "Wait a minute. I don't know who that is, but he's somebody.

The reason most folksongs are so atrocious is that they were written by the people.